MINIRVA - Microfluidic Nerve InfraRed Vasculature Apparatus
Bladder Volume Monitoring Device
CereBend Stent: Intra-Arterial Stent to Treat Trigeminal Neuralgia Utilizing the Shape Memory Properties of Nitinol
Cardiac Capture
Dry Socket Prevention
Aspiration Thrombectomy Catheter Characterization
Pediatric Oximetry Device
Pediatric Distraction Device for Improved Quality of Care
SAZER Vaginal Speculum
Optimizing Inhaled Corticosteroids for Pediatric Asthma Patients
Pectus Pressure Corrector
Adjustable Vaginoplasty Healing Device for Enhanced Postoperative Care
SmartBend: Wearable Device for Lower Back Injury Prevention
BottleBuddy: A One-Handed Assistive Device for Opening Water Bottles
InsuranCS Buddy - ICS Asthma Optimization App
3D Printed Pressure Sensing Prosthetic Socket
MILO: The Monitor for Inducible Laryngeal Obstruction
IEMG
CalmPAX: Relieving acute anxiety associated with pediatric vaccinations
Spinal Cord Stimulator Lead Wire
Accumulation of Biofilm in Endotracheal Tubes
Microfluidic Benchtop Testing Model of the Human Peripheral Nervous System Vasculature
Amy Lee, Althea Belen, Garrett Bangert, Vlad Marasigan, and Jacob Ackerman
Two million Americans suffer from peripheral nerve injury every year. Peripheral nerve repair surgery involves removing damanged nerve tissue and inserting a graft to promote healthy regeneration. Current surgical methods for identifying damaged nerve tissue rely on a "cut and check" method. Surgeons begin by cutting around the known, damaged area of the nerve and continue to cut until the nerve starts bleeding. This normal blood flow indicates that the nerve vasculature is undamaged, functional, and healthy. With the current method, surgeons have to make unnecessary cuts of the nervous tissue, potentially removing healthy nerve tissue and causing pain and post-surgery complications, which result in longer recovery time. In an effort to improve the current method, a near IR imaging device was created to help surgeons visualize blood flow noninvasively to reduce the amount of cuts required during surgery.
Impedance-Based Bladder Volume Monitor to Reduce Autonomic Dysreflexia
Ben McAteer, Stevie Burgett, Anand Shroff, Chris Kannmacher, and Damen Wilson
Spinal cord injuries can cleave nerve bundles responsible for bodily functions and nerve feedback in lower areas of the body. A buildup of stimuli originating below the site of injury can cause autonomic dysreflexia (AD), and overreaction of the autonomic nervous system. This increases the chances of stroke and heart attack by 400% per occurrence, up to 40 times per day. If the injury has occurred at the T-6 vertebrae or above, AD is triggered by the feeling of a full bladder 85% of the time. This affects 210,000 spinal cord injured individuals in the United States. Currently, there are no constant-sensing preventative solutions for bladder-triggered AD. An engineering solution is needed to reduce the rate of occurence of bladder-triggered AD and reduce trips to the hospital by 85% after implementation.
Cerebend Stent: Intra-Arterial Stent to Treate Trigeminal Neuralgia Utilizing the Shape Memory Properties of Nitinol
Omar Abdalla, Don Jones, Teddy Lester, Christina Mangione, and Sadhana Venkataraman
Trigeminal Neuralgia is a chronic pain condition that results from compression of the trigeminal nerve by the Superior Cerebellar Artery (SCA). This pain can be so extreme, doctors and patients alike have dubbed it "the suicide disease". Treatment methods are cause for concern for patients; the nerve-blockign medications prescribed have been proven to interact with multiple other drugs, and brain surgery is extremely invasive. After engaging in literature searches and clinical interviews, our team is designing a bistable nitinol stent to move the superior cerebellar artery away from the Trigeminal Nerve. By relieving the pressure from the artery onto the nerve, we expect to reduce or remove the pain associated with trigeminal neuralgia.
Cardiac Capture
Aditi Acharya, Jake Malven, Vincent Ounchaidee, Shiyu Wang, and Adrew Fleck
Electrocardiograms (ECGs) are regularly employed in hospitals nationwide by nurses and physicians, and both paper ECGs and digital ECGs are commonly printed, faxed, or sent as digital documents to cardiac specialists for detailed diagnosis. Transmission by fax, consisting of 90% of medical communication, is very destructive to image quality - often making ECG squares and complexes indiscernible, adding further distortion to paper images that often have several noisy artifacts. Image resolution further suffers with digital transfer to clinicians, limiting diagnostic ability and resulting in poor patient outcomes. Image quality often degrades to the point that ECGs cannot be visually interpreted with manual methods and physicians gain nothing from such noisy images. There is a clinical need for a fast and effective method to scan paper ECGs without distorting the waveforms and obtaining a clear image. Cardiac Capture is a new, iOS-compatible platform to aid clinicians in analyzing ECG physical characteristics while saving time and improving diagnostic ability.
Dry Socket Prevention Using an Adhesive Covering
Erica McNeil, Rivu Ghosh, Adriene Mannas, Lucy Fahler, and Maria Fischer
5 million Americans undergoing wisdom tooth extraction surgery each year, 25-30% of whom suffer from dry socket. Dry socket is caused by the dislodging of the blood clot in the socket after tooth extraction, leaving bone and nerve exposed and susceptible to infection and extreme pain. This leads to extreme discomformt and often results in several follow up appointments and additional cost to the patient. There is a need to reduce the prevalence of dry sockets in patients undergoing wisdom tooth removal. Our team designed an adhesive covering that both protects and treats the area by promoting healing and clotting at the extraction. Using ingredients already proven to be effective individually, our solution will resolve the issue with patient non-compliance in post-operative protection of the extraction site.
Aspiration Thrombectomy Catheter Characterization
Ciara de Venecia, Matthew Ebert, John Hughes, Ethan Pollack, and Arjun Saxena
Strokes are one of the leading causes of death in the United States and a major cause for serious permanent disabilities in adults. Most of these are ischemic strokes, which are caused by an occlusion in the brain that blocks blood flow to a particular region. The leading treatment currently consists of removing the clot through aspiration, mechanical methods, or drug administration to break down the clot. Current thrombectomy devices used for treatment are unable to remove clots found in the distal arteries of the brain with diameters between 0.2-1.5 mm. This creates a need for a distal thrombectomy device that is capable of retrieving blood clots found in these regions. Due to limitations of current catheter tips in their aspiration force, our team redesigned these tips to increase aspriation. Several tip modifications were manufactured and tested for their aspiration pressure, burst pressure, and flow rate, fully characterizing the impact each had on improved treatment for ischemic stroke patients.
Novel Pediatric Oximetry Measurement Device
Stella Erickson, Katherine Kerr, Katherine McCarthy, John Salvas, and Pankti Thakkar
Congenital heart defects account for one percent of the 3.6 million annual births in the United States. The most definitive diagnostic procedure involves a cardiac catheterization to measure oxygen saturations and pressures in the heart and surrounding vasculature with an echocardiogram. Current oximetry measureemtns require up to 0.4 mL of blood loss from the patient and 90 seconds for each measurement. With measurements repeated up to 20 times per procedure for a complex patient, this can lead to anemia in a an infant patient. There is a need to reduce blood loss and associated consequences, shorten the procedure times, lower healthcare costs, and and improve patient outcomes in cardiac catheterization procedures. The team's proposed solution utilizes a spectrophotometric sensor, oximetry algorithms, a user-friendly interface, and integrates with the current clinical workflow to reduce blodd loss and procedure length.
Pediatric Distraction Device for Improved Quality of Care
Zada Anderson, Andy Midkiff, Katie Moravec, Jenny Riddle, and Matt Schreck
With over 50% of pediatric patients experiencing anxiety or hyperactivity in clinical settings, high anxiety levels often lead to reduced quality of care, decreased efficiency, and difficulty communicating effectively with patients and their guardians. Current distraction methods for pediatric patients either lack sensory stimulation or are overly bulky and have limited clinical use. Our team designed a cost-effective space-themed mobile pediatric distraction device that incorporates auditory, visual, and tactile sensory components to provide an interactive way to occupy the patient. This solution provides at least 10 minutes of distraction for pediatric patients experiencing anxiety or hyperactivity, allowing medical professionals to perform simple procedures with limited patient resistance.
SAZER Vaginal Speculum
Safa Chowdhury, Adriana Rotger, Omozafe Udegbe, Evelyn Nonamaker, and Riley Holloway
A high percentage of women aged 15-65 avoid pelvic procedures involving speculums due to fear of discomfort, which can lead to increased rates of reproductive health issues. Major issues with current speculum designs include increased occurence of vaginal wall collapsing during examination, poor visualization of vaginal walls, cold metal feel, pinch points, and loud clicking sounds, which all lead to general discomfort. Our solution includes a novel opening mechanism, a tri-valvular conical blade design, variable blade sizes, and a novel locking mechanism to address these current needs. This novel design allows for easy insertion and less patient discomfort, and with transparent blades, physicians will have improved visualization of the vaginal wall. With an ergonomic, single-handed operation, our solution will improve patient satisfaction, encourage routine examinations, and result in reduced risk of late diagnosis for cervical cancer, STIs, and other reproductive diseases.
Optimizing Inhaled Corticosteroids for Pediatric Asthma Patients
Jack Anderson, Michael Klug, Seth Morris, Devin Shah, and Jorge Velez
According to the CDC, one in 13 people suffer from asthma, which is the leading chronic disease in children and affects 5.1 million children annually. Asthma management involves prescribed Inhaled Corticosteroids (ICS), which poses challenges for physicians in pediatric patients due to ever-changing insurance policies. This leads to extended time consumed by physicians and increased healthcare visits and patient-related costs. There is a need for a way to optimize proper drug selection adn reduce the time to determine such regimen and associated patient costs. Our solution is a web-based application that takes in patient inputs of age, medication category, insurance company, and insurance plan and outputs a list of potential patient-specific drug recommendations, filtered by these different categories. This solution provides an advantage over existing methods by providing access to this information directy to the physician during the prescription process.